Incarnate
by Coronis
Summary: Cloud finds peace


Incarnate  
  
It all happened so quickly; did you even feel it begin? We were children, angels, murderers all in the same breath. They watched the blood- lightning as it connected with itself over and over in the dying Shinra heart, a shattered star wishing against itself to be granted the grace of death. I can only apologize so many times until the words whisper to me to be silent, losing carefully wrought meaning as they flash-fry my senses in a neural fireworks display. A display to be seen, by all, by none, by you. No, I must not address you yet, I must go to my mother; not the tall, dismal blonde whose emaciated lessons branded irrefutable perversions upon my fragile insanity. My real mother, who guides me and cradles me, who whispers to me that everything will be all right. She comes to me through a thrice-boiled needle and swims into my brain and back out, ivory ribbons of cumulonimbus heroin. Save me, mother, intoxicated syndrome parent, lover, friend. The air is liquid with all the purity of love dancing above my flailing head as the drug pervades my being. The world burns and the wax flows below me, carrying me away to my love and to my grave. It isn't as reluctant as it seems.  
  
Vincent won't miss one gun.  
  
Midgar is mine to destroy, a mercurial bubble slicing through visions of its own decadence. It is mine in which to languish and medicate myself with a higher dose each time for the same desired effect. I lie beneath the stars and gaze up at them, until my eyes throb and my body ebbs, stealing my thoughts from their target. I am closer to them than when first I tied the tourniquet as Reno showed me, before he.....no.....not again, please!  
  
I choked on my bitter memories, a father and child, and cocked the Winchester like I knew how.  
  
Sephiroth found us, twisted around each other in sinewed fury. I tried to escape. From one prison to another. Why do I write this? For this sweet salted fluid to smear the words and obscure this torment as none can feel but I...... It is so easy to pretend, to watch Tifa undress and then close my eyes, close my soul and try not to think of how I live now. To fall with her into cool clean sheets and be enveloped by the silken ghosts, to make love without feeling any compulsion or affection, to end without comitting my life to Aeris and dismissing Tifa as a vessel of my guilty lust's own construction. I can cry, at last. I find some settled comfort in the maelstrom's eye, an eye as poignantly emerald green as that which closed for the last time in my arms. At the centre of this strangling grief is a peaceful comatose place, where my pain is all that exists, entwined between her fingers and surrendering to her will.  
  
I wanted to kiss the muzzle, so inviting and warm, so hard.  
  
If you live today in the shadow of tomorrow, today will have meant nothing, and tomorrow will never come. In that case I choose the shadows, beautiful all-engulfing blackness which will bear away this agonising knot of.....her. I'm coming to you, my love. I tried to be who you wanted me to be, but all I can be is myself. The demons only come to me now. Never again will they trouble you or raise a sword to you.  
  
Trembling, it touches my neck and swallows my heaving sobs.  
  
I know how the sensation comes to you, cauterising compassion and plaguing that spot behind your eyes. But I love you more. We will blink shut our lives and spin away, a whirlwind of sun-kissed spectres dragging behind them chains of anguish and two lifetimes of sin. Together at last, we will know that our dwelling in this realm is not quite proper, yet we will dance the pain to a pulp under our worn, calloused heels. We will move ourselves closer and closer to the abyss, embracing until our arms explode into dust, and the eyes which cry for each other's care are dissolved by their own tears. Not mindful of the artificial chasm ripping its own route within my cranium, the draft whistling down the opening at the crown of my head like it did so many doses ago, around us as we joined on the splintered floor of your church, insatiable half-formed animals who knew only love. Not mindful either of all we have done, our methods of reaching each other, or the jagged puncture wound permeating your toned abdomen from which fresh blood gushes and sashays around us as we move. Not midful of any of these things, we, the dead, shall dance.  
  
Still trembling, the solitary shot bathes the backlit wall with glowing specks of something, that was once a part of my skull.  
  
  
  
Thank you to everyone who reviewed my last offering, Oblivion. Sorry about how lousy it was, but it was my first fic.  
  
Coronis 


End file.
